Gary Younge
Another Day in the
Death of America
On an average day in America, seven children and teens will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America, Guardian editor-at-large,
Gary Younge, tells the stories of the lives lost during a single day. It could have been any day, but he picked 23 November 2013. Black, white and
Latino, aged 9 to 19, they fell at sleepovers, on street corners, in stairwells and on their own doorsteps, from the rural midwest to the barrios of Texas.
None of these stories reached the national news. Gary spent 18 months investigating the lives and death of these ten young people, to reveal the full human stories
behind the statistics and the brief mentions in local papers to discover what they might tell us about America at large. Raising crucial questions about race, class,
youth and parenting, Gary puts a child’s face on the “collateral damage” of gun violence in America and asks how these shootings have become a banal
fact of death. While mass shootings like Sandy Hook cause national outrage, why do these everyday individual deaths barely register in the national consciousness? And
what is it about the political culture that makes those in power incapable of achieving gun law reform?
Gary Younge lived in the USA for twelve years as a correspondent for the Guardian, and returned to the UK in 2015.
Gary Younge will be in conversation with Cilius Victor.
